Exaggeration is as harmful to a cause as an out right lie. To paraphrase the philosopher-poet-comedian George Carlin, "That article is Bull***t and its bad for you." :evil:
The article correctly identified the mode of transmission of the virus, tools, touch and pollen. The claim that these nursery plants could endanger wild populations is completely false. Even if nearby wild orchids were pollinated by infected plants, the weakening of the individual plant in the wild would cause it to die sooner that its healthy neighbors, thus removing it as a source of wild innoculum from the local population. Only if a local vector in the wild habitat were spreading the disease significantly faster than the virus killed off the plant, only then could the virus spread in the wild. Because virused plants bloom less often, and the flowers collapse quickly, they are less likely to have their pollen picked up by insect pollinators. The spread into wild populations would naturally be self limiting.
Fungal and bacterial diseases are the type of plant disease that truly can wipe out a species, witness the American elm and the American and European chestnuts. Here a well run phytosanitary inspection program can really help, though it is not a fool proof system, and invasive pathogens can slip through undetected.
A little side note, the American Chestnut Foundation has published recently that by 2015 there should be sufficient stock of hybrid American chestnuts that are blight resistant to be released for the first wave of replacing the American Chestnuts. These hybrids are F3 to F5 with only 1/32 of the parental contribution being Chinese chestnut. The breeding program has been selecting parental stock from each generation for timber characteristics, nut flavor and oil content, in addition to disease resistance. The hybrids will be nearly identical to American chestnuts, except possibly maturing at only 75 to 100 feet in height, where the original American chestnut could reach heights of 150 feet or more. The final size won't be truly known for a couple hundred years, but that is the guess from the breeders. There is also another group working on disease resistant Amer. chestnuts using only American chestnut stock. Their results have been very limited so far. Another approach to growing American chestnuts is to deliberately infect trees when they reach about one inch in diameter with a hypo-virulent strain of the blight. The hypo-virulent blight still causes burls or cankers, and does weaken the tree, but usually the trees continue to grow, flower and produce nuts. Of interest for Dot and our many Michigan members, the first American origin strain of hypo-virulent blight was isolated from surviving century old chestnuts in north central Michigan. A lot of work was or is being done with the blight at MSU in Lansing. So there is hope our grandkids could once again go on a chestnut harvest in October, and roast them by the open fire.